Recently legendary Swiss art collector Uli Sigg donated $170 million worth of contemporary Chinese art to the M+ museum in Hong Kong, which is scheduled to open in 2017. A former ambassador to China, Sigg started collecting works by artists such as Ai Weiwei, Zhang Xiaogang and Fang Lijun in the 1970s and has built one of the world's great collections of Chinese art. Under the agreement, he will gift 1,463 works and M+ will pay around $23 million for an additional 47 works from the 70s and 80s. M+ director Lars Nittve said this is common practice among museums when receiving major collections from donors.
The decision to send the collection to Hong Kong rather than mainland China, and the part gift/part purchase has drawn some flak from the mainland. Sigg answers his critics in a recent interview with ARTINFO. Read more...
Image: Uli Sigg with Ai Weiwei's Uli Sigg
